Petya aftermath: a month after the virus outbreak

The damage of Petya virus attacks is still being estimated

A month has passed since the new Petya virus version rolled through the cyber world in a wave of terror and confusion. Victims are still counting their losses which presumably reach millions if not billions of dollars.

Major manufacturing, telecommunication, and other social service companies say that at the moment it is quite difficult to estimate the full extent of the inflicted damage. Currently, the victimized businesses fearfully await the end of the year when the last and final calculations will be completed.

Luckily, cyber security experts do not intend on leaving the Petya outbreak story on a bad note. Well-known antivirus researchers have already managed to come up with working decryptors for three initial Petya virus version Red Petya, Green Petya/ Mischa and Goldeneye.

These decryption tools are not magical. They may freeze the computer or cause errors with a risk of damaging data. That’s the reasons experts always advice making backup copies of the files in case the recovery failed.

Nevertheless, in most cases, decryptors work fine, and if you still have some of your data that you can’t access, you should definitely give them a try.

Unfortunately, we have no good news for the users who have been infected with NotPetya or other hybrid Petya versions. At the moment, at least. These ransomware variants are not developed by Janus Cybercrime which means that the decryptors which work for the original versions are useless when applied for NotPetya.

However, you should not lose hope! There are numerous cases which prove that ransomware decryption is possible and it is only a matter of time when the security experts find a way to work around the encryption and give back your files.

Protecting your data is important: backups are the key

Sadly as it sounds, ransomware developers get more advanced as time goes by Once the security experts patch up one vulnerability, the criminals find another and the cycle continues.
The best way to actually protect your data is to keep backups of it, preferably a few copies of the documents in a few different places. Depending on the importance of your data and your needs, you can invest in automatic backup making software or create extra copies of your most essential files manually.